Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/166

160 "There is no offense," the Altrurian answered for himself, "in what Mr. Makely says, though, from the Altrurian point of view, there is a good deal of error. Does it seem so strange to you," he asked, addressing himself to Mrs. Camp, "that people should found a civilization on the idea of living for one another, instead of each for himself?"

"No, indeed!" she answered. "Poor people have always had to live that way, or they could not have lived at all."

"That was what I understood your porter to say last night," said the Altrurian to me. He added, to the company generally: "I suppose that even in America there are more poor people than there are rich people?"

"Well, I don't know about that," I said. "I suppose there are more people independently rich than there are people independently poor."

"We will let that formulation of it stand. If it is true, I do not see why the Altrurian system should be considered so very un-American. Then, as to whether there is or ever was really a practical altruism, a civic expression of it, I think it cannot be denied that among the first Christians, those who immediately